2009-06-06

Bayesian hypervelocity stars

On the plane home I finished working out the Bayesian framework for inferring the potential of the Milky way and the velocity and mass distributions produced by the launch mechanism for hypervelocity stars. Now, to the SDSS data, where there are a few known. I am not sure there are enough, and with only photometric parallaxes, the observations may not be highly constraining on the potential (which is what I care about). I am *sure* there is enough information already to interestingly constrain the velocity distribution produced by the launch mechanism.